Talk - Sacred landscapes in India : Myths and Symbols May 8, 2009

Talk - Sacred landscapes in India : Myths and Symbols by Amita Sinha.Landscape is a language to be read as a way of understanding a culture and society. South Asian landscapes are rich with symbols, from the Cosmic Tree in sacred groves to cities patterned on mandalas that can be traced to archetypes universal to humankind. They express relationship with the divine, are woven into myths and traditions, and are focus of rituals and traditional practices. Valued and revered over centuries by succeeding generations, they become part of cultural and genetic memory, offering the possibility of a strong charge when encountered in real life. Landscape meanings, complex and shifting as they are, are built upon this possibility of charge afforded by places. The talk explores the interface between nature, culture, and the built landscape by tracing the meaning of archetypal symbols in Indic mythology, ritual space, and contemporary design practice. It will be illustrated with landscapes of the Ramayana, Braj, Sarnath, Pavagadh, Varanasi , Tiruchirapalli and other sacred sites of the Indian subcontinent. Amita Sinha is a Professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture at University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, USA where she teaches cultural landscapes and heritage design. She is the author of Landscapes in India: Forms and Meanings (University Press of Colorado, 2006) and has published extensively on heritage landscapes of Sarnath, Taj Mahal, Champaner-Pavagadh, and Lucknow . She is currently a Senior Fulbright Researcher in New Delhi affiliated with INTACH and is working on heritage sites in Delhi and Lucknow .

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